Places

Building the City (3)

Heat wave is in full effect here, but the sea is a wonderful respite. We’re glad that we’re doing the video shoot on Saturday in the water rather than, say, on some baking marble shade-less ruin that’s an hour-long hike up in the mountains. I think our performers will be glad too.

Further testing yesterday gave us the dimensions of the city and information about its movement in the water and the need for weights.

Never before have we attempted a project this technically complex with this many variables. To name a few, just for the photo and video-making process: using an underwater housing for both cameras, plus using a floating aquarium for the still camera, wind, the height of the tide at the location, performers whose first language is Greek and possibly Turkish (although everyone speaks English fluently), constructed moving elements, tracking underwater shots with no track, the unpredictability of casting a net and throwing weighted objects in the water at even intervals, shooting on a potentially crowded beach on a Saturday during a heat wave. And that’s before we even get to the finessed editing and installation process.

We’re trouble-shooting as much as possible in the meantime and blocking out what each of us will be doing during the shoot. Murray, camera work, me, directing. With as much attention as we’re getting on the beaches here (everyone wants to know what we’re doing with our floating aquarium and camera equipment), it should — at the very least — be a very entertaining afternoon for the locals at the beach Xila here on the island.